January 2011

January 31, 2011

Excellent column by Robert J. Samuelson, "How Obama's speech muddied the budget debate". After concisely dispatching three myths--"The problem is the deficit," "Eliminating wasteful or ineffective programs will close deficits," and "The elderly have 'earned' their Social Security and Medicare by their lifelong payroll taxes, which were put aside for their retirement"--Samuelson concludes as follows:

It's a cliche, but true: There are no easy - or popular - solutions. Controlling the budget requires some combination of (a) reducing benefits for the elderly; (b) downsizing other programs, including defense; and (c) raising taxes. Not only did Obama avoid choices, but he failed to frame the debate in a way that clarified what the choices are. So public opinion remains muddled, and politicians - sensitive to public opinion - remain stalemated.

Here’s why the headlines understate the gravity of our situation. CBO is required to use current law as the basis for its estimates—to assume, for example, that all the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2012, that Medicare payments to physicians will be cut sharply, and that the alternative minimum tax will be allowed to affect millions more Americans. Using these assumptions, taxes as a share of GDP would by allowed to increase by five percentage points by 2014 and would keep on rising thereafter, we’d have a cumulative deficit of about $7 trillion dollars over the next decade, and debt held by the public would increase from 62 percent to 77 percent of GDP. Using more politically realistic assumptions, the cumulative deficit would be about $12 trillion, and debt held by the public would reach 97 percent of GDP, the highest level since 1946 (when it was headed down, not up).

Why can't it be done? Largely because of opposition in his own party. Even if Obama ultimately failed at, say, promoting a gradual increase in the Social Security retirement age, or means-testing benefits—or simply explaining that actually we really will need to get more revenue from somewhere to pay for universal health care—he could help educate Democrats and soften them up for what will probably be a necessity coming down the road. That would be a patriotic service even if he's not the person down the road who cuts the deal. But it might cost him some 2012 votes—especially since, by explaining the need to fund health care, he'd embarrassingly undercut the bogus sales pitch Democrats just made when they pretended passing the health care bill was a painless long-term "curve-bender."

Finally, here's Governor Chris Christie talking, talking as well as any politician in my adult lifetime. Talk, sadly, is not action. But if our political system acted half as well as he talks, we could solve the problem.

Following that--and a story about his "last American car . . . a 1985 Ford with brain damage; an irreparably faulty computer would periodically shut all systems down in mid-drive" which was precisely the problem with a '83 Chevy I once owned--Washington Post humorist Gene Weingarten launches a lengthy review of the Chevy Volt.

Weingarten keeps trying, as he candidly admits, to find fatal flaws with it. But he likes it.

However, he doesn't discuss cost too much, including the potential time cost of periodically siphoning the gasoline out of the tank[!]

Not that attactive bodies are all that common or are easy to achieve, but I think there are far more of them than really pretty faces. I'd guess--if somebody will give me a grant, I'd be happy to undertake rigorous research--that good bodies outnumber pretty faces by at least ten to one.

"Why are airlines cramming customers onto uncomfortably overloaded planes? For the same reason they are doing a lot of other things that customers dislike, such as eliminating food service and charging for baggage. In their desperate attempts to avoid going broke yet again, the airlines are taking steps not calculated to make people want to do business with them. That is not how competitive markets are supposed to work."

Interesting article by Joe Posnanski, rapidly becoming one of my alltime favorite sports writers, on painful sports losses. I think he has number one right: the 1972 Olympics gold medal basketball game. (But maybe that's just because it's only one of two on the list that I saw live.) And while I'd seen #10 before, it's still amazing.